Murphy Was a Railroad Man

Dedicated To:

Judy O’Malley, Patricia O’Malley, Jake O’Malley, Connie Wedel, and Kim Marshall.

A special thanks to Patricia O’Malley, without whose encouragement and guidance this book may not have been possible.

A note of recognition and appreciation to all of you daily commuters, you hardy souls, who through your perseverance and resolve, endure the rigors and risks of a life dependent on public transportation.

And to all of you railroad workers out there! You know who you are. This book is dedicated to you too! You go about your daily tasks in an uncomplaining and unselfish manner as you strive to keep the nation’s trains on-time and in stellar working condition. Without your hard work, devotion to duty, and commitment to excellence, the railroads couldn’t exist. We salute you!

THE PLAYERS

Introduction

Murphy was a railroad man. You know, the guy who wrote Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Yes, he must have been a railroad man. Where else would he have gotten the inspiration for his law? For on the railroad, years and years of tradition are unhampered by modern progress. It’s a place where anything that can go wrong does go wrong---on a regular basis. This book is about the little-known world of the railroad repair shops, located throughout the country, where trains are serviced and repaired. It’s a hazardous and hidden world populated by a unique breed of individuals.

Our story takes place in a backwater town in upstate New York served by the Hudson Valley Railroad. Onionville is nestled in the foothills of the lower Catskill Mountains about ninety miles northwest of New York City. It is a town born of the railroad one hundred years earlier when the Hudson Valley Railroad decided to run one of its lines to there. It is an isolated town with only limited access via rural roads. The secluded townspeople are nearly self-sufficient, growing their food, raising livestock, and caring for most of their daily needs locally. This isolation, along with occasional intermarriage, produced a population with limited perspective and some brain damage.

Since the railroad had established a line from Onionville a repair shop was built there. Maintenance on all the trains running to New York City was performed in this shop. The majority of the shop personnel came from the town of Onionville and were known as Onionville boys. These men knew from their high school days that they were destined to work for the railroad in the Onionville Shop, as most of their fathers and grandfathers had before them. In many ways the shop resembled a halfway house with workers trudging around dressed in tattered clothing and wearing brain-dead looks due to limited contact with the outside world and the inhalation of copious diesel fumes.

Everything in the Onionville Shop was done backwards. Coffee breaks were taken at 8 a.m., before work began, because it took the supervisors half an hour to figure out what the day’s assignments were. The majority of the work was given to the men who had put forth the effort in the past to learn the complexities of repairing the trains, since they were the only ones who could do the work. This rewarded the lazy with no work. Promotions to foreman were restricted to incompetent workers since the good ones couldn’t be spared. This ensured a continuous group of inept foremen.

Picture a shop with incompetent supervisors, untrained and unwilling workers, broken or unreliable test equipment; all working together to create chaos and mayhem. Add to the mix Bruno, the Cajun shop superintendent whose butchery of the English language created confusion and misdirection, and you’ve got the perfect formula for Armageddon.

Now if you’ve pictured all of this, you realize that Murphy must have been a railroad man, and he probably worked in the Onionville Shop.

A Word about Bruno

Bruno Beauregard was the Onionville Shop superintendent; everyone reported to him. Bruno was a short, pudgy Cajun from New Orleans who spoke with a drawl and had a gift for mangling the English language. He’d say things like, Don’t put all your eggs in one shell, or We've been progressing downhill all day and now we're back to square zero! or If you give that man a toe he'll take the whole arm! While much of what Bruno said made no sense, he was the boss and his instructions had to be followed. They set the tone and direction for the shop’s day-to-day operations but provided precious little useful guidance for the goofy guys who worked in the Onionville Shop.

Chapter 1

Frank the Forgetful Foreman

Frank the Forgetful Foreman was one of the day shift foremen. He was dubbed The Forgetful Foreman because he couldn’t remember anything for longer than about two minutes. Frank wasn’t actually forgetful. It was more that things didn’t quite sink in all the way. Thoughts would enter the mostly empty space that was supposed to be filled by his brain, rattle around the edges for a while, and then evaporate. It was a characteristic of Frank’s that the men would take full advantage of. Bruno would say that the men liked Frank, ’cause he can’t remember nuttin’. He got amnia.

Frank had a food fetish and a bald spot. He would spend fifteen minutes each morning arranging his hair in different directions, creating a ridiculous-looking comb-over to cover his bald spot. Frank would carry his hard hat in his arm rather than place it on his head and risk messing up his beautiful hairstyle. The only thing besides his comb-over that Frank was really serious about was food. He lived to eat and began thinking about lunch as soon as he had finished breakfast and began thinking about supper as soon as he had finished lunch.

One Monday morning Bruno was in the foremen’s office giving Frank the day’s work assignments. Four passenger cars needed attention: one car was dead, one had air conditioning problems, another needed a new traction motor, and the fourth was due for a yearly inspection.

Don’t give that inspection job to Manfried, Bruno said. He checks every little thing, and that car will be here for a week! Give it to Gus; he don’t check nuttin’. And don’t assign Haywire Hayes to install that traction motor. He’ll wire it backwards like he always does. Let Ziller do the traction motor. He can use that hydrolical jack right there. And if he needs any wire adapters, the storeroom got tons of ’em. I checked yesterday, and they got both adapter uppers and adapter downers. Tell him not to use any of them four traction motors at the north end of the shop. They’re all bad. The good one is the lonely one at the south end. Assign Almosetti to the air conditioning problem and Muggins to the dead car. I know Muggins hasn’t troubleshot too many dead cars lately, but if he has a problem figuring out what’s wrong with it just tell him to check one thing at a time and use the process of limitations. And tell Ziller when he’s finished installin’ the motor, he got to use the bad traction motor tester to test it ’cause the good tester ain’t workin’. Got it, Frank?

Ah, ye ... yeah.

As Frank walked toward the meeting place the men saw that his head was down. Since they regularly took every opportunity to try to avoid work, seeing Frank’s head down on this occasion, they scattered. By the time Frank looked up, the men were nowhere in sight. Frank turned around and headed back to the foremen’s office at a fast pace, grinding his teeth. He’d seen this game before and was tired of it. When he reached the foremen’s office, he grabbed the PA microphone and screamed, All maintenance forces to the meeting place! Now!

So for the second time Frank walked toward the meeting place, this time with his head up and his eyes looking straight ahead. As he reached the meeting place, Almosetti asked,

Hey, Frank, did you see the Yankee game last night? This was a common ploy used to divert Frank’s easily diverted attention away from the task at hand. It had been employed successfully many times in the past.

Ye ... Yes, I did. That was some game!

Well, Frank, did you see that catch Farley made in center field? Boy, was that something! And did you see ... ? One by one the men peeled off, out of sight, as Frank’s attention was focused on discussing the game with Almosetti. Finally, Almosetti said, Well, Frank, how about my assignment?

Frank blinked, as Almosetti had reminded him that he was not there to discuss the Yankee game. He remembered that he was there to give the men their assignments. But as he struggled to remember the assignments, he realized that the men were no longer there. Furious, Frank raced back to the foremen’s office where he once again commanded that all forces assemble at the meeting place. Then, back at the meeting place again, Frank made a clumsy attempt to reprimand the men for trying to avoid getting their assignments, but was told that because he was talking about baseball for so long, they thought there were no assignments.

Frank now focused his attention on the task at hand and assigned Muggins to work on the dead car. He then turned to the rest of the men to give them their assignments, but his mind went blank. A full ten minutes had passed since Bruno had given him the assignments—well beyond Frank’s normal memory range. Frank now began to walk in a confused manner—with quick changes in pace and a finger scratching his bald spot—as he made his way back to the foremen’s office for the third time!

When Frank reached the foremen’s office he saw Bruno sitting at his desk.

Er, Boss, cou ... could you tell me the assignments again? I forgot everything but the dead car.

Looks like we’re progressing downhill again, Bruno said.

Since your memory is so good, Frank, I’ll give you one assignment at a time, because if I give you all three, you’ll forget all three! Now—Ziller gets the traction motor to install. Forget goin’ to that meeting place! Give the men their assignments in here, where I can remind you what they are!

On course again but feeling nervous in Bruno’s presence, Frank began to page Ziller without realizing that Ziller was standing right next to him.

The man is right next to you, you idiot! Bruno said. Now get that monkey dung outta your eyes and give him his assignment so we can get some work done around here!

Er ... Er, Bill, yo ... you have to install a new traction motor.

Where is it? Ziller asked.

It ... It’s at the south end of the shop, Frank said, while pointing north. Ziller, a man of few words and little patience, shook his head and left the office.

OK, two assignments down and two to go. Bruno doled out the third assignment. With Frank’s mind now a maelstrom of mayhem with the men’s names and assignments all a jumble in it, the flustered Frank began to page himself.

If you wonder why the man don’t show up, it’s because you just paged yourself, you buffalo wing! Bruno said.

Frank now remembered that he was supposed to assign Gus to the inspection job, so he paged him. Without waiting for Gus to arrive, Bruno said, OK Frank, I can’t wait no longer. I got work to do. Here’s the fourth and final assignment. See if you can remember it without forgettin’ the third one! I got to go to New York City now to pay the pauper. They want to know why we ain’t gettin’ more trains fixed around here. There are goin’ to be a lot of big shots there, askin’ me tough questions, and a stenofer, takin’ notes. If you have any problems, see Fritz. From now on, when I ain’t here, he’s my mouth-voice.

Br … Bruno, while you’re there in New York City, can you ask them if they think there’s going to be a strike? Frank asked.

Yeah, well, I’ll ask ’em, but I don’t think I’ll get any good information there. Sometimes you don’t want it from the horse’s mouth - you want it from the horse’s ass! And I’ve already been hearing from everybody’s ears in all the shops that there’s going to be a strike. I’ll tell you one thing though—if the men do strike, they’ll be cuttin’ off their fingers to spite their faces. Now I need a ride to the train station. Who’s available?

Only Haywire Hayes, Frank said. And I know you don’t want him driving you. Besides, the truck’s exhaust is making a loud noise.

"Well, have someone take the truck to the service station later. If it ain’t the muffler, it’s probably the Cadillac converter. And